AustLit

A London visitor determines to try a St Valentine's Day superstition and runs into a grave robbing expedition at the churchyard at midnight. Fortunately, the son of her hostess disguised as a ghost takes the reins and restores order ... Light. (PB)

A medical student's loss of a seal ring in an apple pie reveals a romance. Slight. (PB)

Tale of an impecunious British officer who hatches a scheme to borrow money from his aunt for a fictititious posting to Egypt. The elaborate hoax fails when his proxy dies and the news kills his aunt - but not before she has made a new will disinheriting him. Slight, light humour. (PB)

A mother's love for her short-lived baby lasts all her life, even through the birth of other children. Pathos. (PB)

Four miners, three Englishmen and a negro from Virginia - an escaped slave - finally strike gold on an Australian goldfield (probably South Australian.) They leave for home aboard an English ship but Juberlo Tom never arrives as he dies saving the captain's young daughter from an attack by Islanders. Odd mixture of incident, character etc. (PB)

Mark Sinclair is called to a farming district in Victoria where a newly married farmer is believed murdered. his rich odler wife has foreclosed on the farm she held the mortgage to, but found too late that he had a de facto wife and child who had legal title. She beheaded her husband and strangled her rival's child - and is herself tortured to death slowly by the mother for revenge - Sinclair not discovering it until years later. Violent story. (PB)